Sentenced North From Here: the album that exploded melodic metal

Back in the chaotic early 1990s, most death metal bands were racing to catch up with albums like Morbid Angel Blessed Are the Sick and Deicide Legion. Bands increasingly experimented with complex rhythms and riffs but eschewed the radio-friendly sound of the last generations of metal, including the melodic harmonized guitar attack of Iron Maiden.

Enter Sentenced. Like At the Gates before them, this Finnish band decided to work with melody in addition to complex riffs, and to do so began to work with lead-picked single-string melodies. After their first album of Swedish-inspired primal death metal called Shadows of the Past, Sentenced improved musically and artistically and took the leap into melodic metal. At this point, almost no bands would touch this style as it seemed an anachronism held over from the 1980s where death metal was forging ahead with chromatic riffs and difficult tempi.

Sentenced took the Slayer approach to songwriting with verse-chorus songs interrupted by transitional riffs for emphasis wrapped around a lyrical concept and added to it the Iron Maiden style harmonized guitars producing a melodic effect. Following a lead from At the Gates, the band also allowed melodies to evolve over the course of a song, creating an immersion in similar sound in which slight textural and phrasal changes could take on greater effect. Along with other bands like Unanimated and Cemetary, Sentenced forged a different path which succeeded because it kept the alienated and dark sound of death metal.

Just a few years later, this sound would explode as bands like Dissection mixed more of the NWOBHM melody and even more abrasive death metal and black metal technique into the mix. After that, clone bands like Dark Tranquillity and In Flames took this style further toward radio metal, but for a few years, this small group of melodic death metal bands revealed the potential of this style. North From Here much like its iconic cover transports the listener to a consciousness beyond the everyday in which union with the empty cosmos and the potential of transcendence of the everyday propels the mind through not only darkness but into a sense of magical light which rediscovers life as a visionary journey. Without losing any of the intensity of their earlier album, Sentenced layered emotion on top of aggression and produced a lasting and unsurpassed testament to the power of this genre.

37 comments

I think there’s also an undeniable Unquestionable Presence influence here. Anyway, fantastic use of melody and the band’s ability for the music to match the content was extraordinary.
The most Finnish sounding metal album!

Some epic lyrics too:

I cut a thousand cuts
Streams run (down) along my arms
Oh the scars in the wind…!
Guiding my pathway on my ride

—

A gathering in the cold, in the North, in the dark lands of Pohjola
Where the sun had not been crossing the sky nor seen for centuries…

We were brought together by oaths we had once sworn – by blood…
…once together drawn…

We had gathered all our forces
Called together all the heroes
Equipped a hundred swordsmen
And a thousand men with crossbows

Strengthened by hate and the thirst for the enemies’ blood
We lay in wait for the season of no light
We had seen the frozen mist – we weren’t afraid to die
And the oaths we had sworn gave a reason to live on

One of my favorite albums all time and a great article on it. I think no-one has quite reached the chilling athmosphere of this album. Many times I have wandered with this on headphones after the sun has set… “while you were asleep I was awake to be a part of the dark”…

Apparently, someone launched a petition to get Ghost to break up and he’s getting a lot of stick from hipsters around the world.

“We petition against Ghost of the heavy metal genre that continues to make albums and tour. Many people getting into metal think that they are the real deal and that we should forget the real bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc. They wish to destroy real metal with their carnival music nonsense. Seriously, is a song like If You Have Ghost actually something that a real metalhead would listen to? They are not metal. People also make the erroneous claim that they are so directly inspired by King Diamond/Mercyful Fate, which is just wrong. They are, in fact, a watered-down version of BOC. We the people oppose Ghost continuing as a band, and they should be split up as soon as possible.”

“Obviously just 100 won’t convince Ghost and their management to listen! If we get 10,000 signatures then MAYBE they will listen and stop making music. Ghost has already spent the last several years butchering our ears with their awful poser music. Real metal does not involve Hot Topic bands. Ghost is not metal. Thank you for reading.”

What a waste of time and a laughably impotent gesture. As if some record company is going to stop providing funding to a high-selling band with lots of buzz around them because a handful of autists signed some online petition.

Best thing we can do is ignore them. Don’t even type their name. If you meet someone who thinks the music is cool, take the appropriate steps and introduce them to better heavy metal bands. You can show them the light; we are all Lucifer.

Metal is serious business you fop. If Ghost were brilliant, they would have thought this ploy up themselves, and I’m not sure they (or whoever is in charge of their marketing) didn’t. Remember, there is no such thing as bad publicity. All this “petition” is doing is giving the band more exposure (“lol look how many haters thiz band has, obvs their doing sumthing right, HAIL GHOST 4 LYFE”). This isn’t “trolling”, it’s just fucking retarded.

Only idiots would show interest in a band just because it has many haters.
If this brings Ghost 100 more idiotic fans and at the same time makes one random 15 year old check out Mercyful fate or Judas Priest, I’m ok with it.
Now carry on with your serious business, you’re such an intellectual.

You’re missing my point. I’ll try to be less “intellectual”. Fans of Ghost are not going to be swayed by a petition to shut the band down. Not even morons think that such a thing is possible anyway. This petition is just a circlejerk of faggots who have nothing to say except that they agree that Ghost plays shitty music. Wow, what’s next? Maybe we should go talk trash in the comments section of a Dragonforce video on Youtube. Death to false metal and all that.

For the average (read: retarded) music listener, their position is reinforced when they hear people putting down music that they like and they rationalize this behaviour in totally inane ways (“lol ur just jelly that they sell more rekkids than ur shitty underground bands”). When they see this petition it will bolster their resolve to support their favorite band because nothing unites a group like a common enemy. If you are really against Ghost’s music then you are doing yourself a disservice by spreading this petition around.

Wait… It’s all starting to come together… You’re one of the dudes in the band, aren’t you? ;P

Read again what I wrote before.
We live in a day and age where kids discover Iron Maiden through a Flash of the Blade cover by Avenged Sevenfold.
A -not so average- listener might pick the right side. Maybe that’s something.
Ghost is a trend after all, and it’s going to fade away, one way or another.
Trying to initiate new metalheads/hessians/whatever straight through Celtic Frost, might have worked back in the 80s (for a few people), but it certainly won’t work now.
Even if Ghost themselves launched this petition, then so be it.

At least we agree on one thing; Ghost’s music is a trend and will fade given time. My argument stems from the reality that the fewer people hear about Ghost, the faster their popularity will decline. If you still can’t understand that then I’ll just have to leave this dumb argument where it lies.

In my opinion “Shadows Of The Past” is a pretty good death metal album. Obviously it is influenced by the early Swedish style mixed with some Bolt Thrower and early doom-death from the UK, but it has its own dark voice.

Both Shadows of Past and North from Here are great albums. While Shadows shows less distinct personality, the performance is top notch, as is the production, there is nothing mediocre about it. I stopped listening after North from Here.

If you have a tolerance for mainstream/oldschool influenced stuff, Amok is good – but yeah don’t expect death metal. Taneli Jarva still wrote all the songs as on NFH, after Amok he left and the band’s light went out for good.

I actually don’t mind some of more mainstream early melodic DM albums – Tales from 1000 Lakes, the Gallery, Terminal Spirit Disease etc. All the bands eventually turned to shit but halfway down the spiral they still had some inspiration left to appreciate.

Wait, I thought Miika Tenkula was the main songwriter. At least he’s credited for the music of 5 NFH songs, whereas Jarva is credited for 2 in the NFH booklet.

People blame Jarva’s departure for the drop quality but it was coming anyway. Look at what Jarva is doing now. Even the radio metal of Frozen is better than anything his dressed-up heavy rock band ever released.